Agent 47's next title rewards creativity and crowd management.

I'm walking through a teeming crowd in a busy Chinatown market. It's hard to see much of anything through the intense hustle and bustle, but my instincts help me pick out my target. He's sitting like a king in a white pagoda, right in the middle of the scene. There are probably any number of ways I could take him out, unseen even in the middle of this crowd, but I decide to be a bit more subtle. Time to wander over to a noodle stand where I'm told the target likes to eat lunch.

It's easy enough to take out the cook, don his clothes, and hide him in a dumpster without being seen. The hard part is poisoning the soup and then, waiting... waiting... waiting for my target to walk unknowingly to his last meal. The music swells dramatically and panic sets in among the crowd as my target, the respected "King of Chinatown," chokes and sputters on the ground. I walk calmly to the exit, undiscovered. The perfect assassin as always.

Of course that's just one of the ways the hit can go down in a demo of IO Interactive's Hitman Absolution, which was recently shown in playable form for the first time. The single-scene demo seems designed to show just how many ways Agent 47 can perform a simple hit. Options go beyond the standard "stealth" and "action" boxes and into a great number of different, viable takedowns that fit within each of those descriptions.

"You can crush him, you can blow him up, you can snipe him, you can shoot him with silver bullets, you can snap his neck, you can stab him, you can throw a knife at him..." Art Director Roberto Marquezi rattles off from the top of his head when I ask him about how many different kills are possible in the game. He trails off a bit at the end because he's busy trying to demonstrate a takeout he's never actually tried before: using a gas canister as a makeshift explosion set off by a convenient penthouse sniper rifle.

But there are decisions to be made even after you've chosen this unorthodox method of assassination. To get to the penthouse with the sniper rifle, for instance, you have to sneak past a security guard sitting lazily in a back alley. Maybe you'll find another security guard and steal his costume to wander by unharassed. Maybe you'll use a throwing knife to distract the guard a bit more permanently. Or maybe you'll just take out the breaker switch controlling the TV set he's idly watching, drawing him off to look for a solution and letting you sneak by.

Hitman Absolution trailer

Other hits require even more careful observation to pull off. Hang out long enough by the pagoda, for instance, and you'll see your target asking for a "candy delivery" from an obvious drug dealer. Following the track-suited Lothario and taking his outfit provides the perfect excuse to get as close as you want to your victim without arousing suspicion from the bodyguards.

The smartest hits seem to be the ones that let you set things up and be disguised and halfway to the exit before anyone knows the fix is in. But there's a certain glee to be had in waiting to set off a high-level explosive just as your target walks by and reveling in the outright panic your actions cause in the more than 500 non-player characters milling about. I was impressed by the naturalistic reactions each character had as Agent 47 pushed past. You're almost expected to use the panicking crowd to hide from the security agents that seem to appear out of nowhere after a flashy kill.

While no one kill is strictly preferred over any of the others, the stealthier, more elegant kills do seem to provide a higher base in the game's dynamic scoring system. But you can improve even the louder kills by paying attention to a number of little side goals: stealing a surveillance tape that recorded your presence, for instance, or hiding a body that would otherwise arouse suspicion. The developers expect players to test multiple options in a single scene to try to maximize their position on the game's online leaderboards.

Previous hands-off demos have shown more linear sequences in Hitman Absolution, where Agent 47 has to work his way through buildings teeming with people who want to kill him. That's all well and good, but personally, I'm looking forward to the scenes that let me see just how many ways I can think of to kill a single target.

Hitman Absolution will be available for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on November 20.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.